time for a little PSA ...

While I am happy with the result in the end I was NOT happy with the way that I was treated & all the Crap that I had to go through to get to the end result. :o(
As a result I thought I would take a few and share a little Public Service Announcement with you so that you may avoid such unhappiness in the future.
As you may remember I took the plunge on New Years Eve & purchased a new laptop! (for those of you that know me you Know this is Not something that I do lightly, I do NOT replace things that are perfectly Good for NO reason!)
My laptop had in fact been a pillow top for the last year because you had to prop it open with a pillow because the hinges were broken (which meant it was NOT portable, but ok it was still usable) & then while going back & forth to the hospitol when mom was in ICU it literally melted! Time to bite the bullet & replace it, not the best timing in the world but still pretty exciting since this would be my First time to have a computer ALL MY OWN! :o) A Very Big Deal For Me!!!
New Years Eve mom is released from the hospitol so we headed to Jackson to "shop" for a laptop! Yeah! Trust me when I say shop I mean shop! We went to Every possible store in that town! Looked at Every option & weighed the decission Very Carefully ( I do not just buy on a whim) So after much consideration & going back to a few places the second time I settled on my beautiful Gateway (sometimes know as Esmerelda, lol ;-) ). She was perfect for me! She had a nice large screen (better for editing pics), a built in webcam (so if I want to chat with my big bro), 3 G memory (able to run PS or any other program), & a fair size hard drive (able to hold my pics for quite a while till I'm ready to burn & remove). I was one Happy Happy Girl! Of course I handled her like a baby (even bought a special lens cloth for wiping the finger prints off). Almost 30 days after the purchase she started crashing while trying to edit pics & Jim said that the memory was bad that we would need to contact BB & have them to replace the memory.
So the following Monday he called & they said to bring it by & they would take care of it, then the ice storm hit & we didn't go Anywhere for several days. The following weekend (Super Bowl Sunday) we made the treck back to Jackson to drop her off. Left her with a nice young man who found out very quickly that I was pretty particular about the computer (it embarrasses Jim when I call her "she or her" lol). We were told that they would have to run a diagnostics on her that we would have to leave it over night. :o( (I was not a happy girl) I waited anxiously Monday for the call to come & pick it up. Shortly after Dev got home from school the call came & we headed out to pick it up.
The minute the young man laid her down (not the same young man a different one) I saw tons of finger prints (no big deal) & SCATCHES!!! I took a deep breath & told myself "probably the kind that buff off, it'll be ok. Then I reached down & touched it to see & I COULD FEEL THE SCRATCH- IT WAS THAT DEEP!!! I was sooo upset I almost cried.
I won't bore you with the rest of the story but what I want you to know is that I was told that they wouldn't do anything about it because there was NO PROOF that they did it, there was NO documentation. To which I said "are you kidding me??? do you really think he was going to note Computer is in perfect condition, no scratches!!!" the woman I was dealing with at the time said "those are minor scratches & we wouldn't have Noted minor scratches".
FYI - in my humble opinion it stops being a scratch when you can feel it & it becomes a Gouge!
The first thing they tried was to give me Gateways # (to see if I could get them to replace it!!!) & a small gift card ($15!!!) for my time! Anyway here are a couple of pics that I took of the scratch/gouge before I took it back to swap out, the quality isn't very good- I was in a hurry ...



I know it doesn't look like much here but it was really quite deep

Here's another shot, do you see that??? I wish you could feel it, then you would understand how upset I was. Long story short, I was put off, treated like an idiot & ignored till I called Corporate, then amazingly there was All kinds of Managers for me to talk to & after a day the decided that they would swap it out for me ( so now I'm reinstalling everything).

Now here's the PSA ... please know that when you drop something off to have it worked on Make Sure They Note The Condition of Your Item ESPECIALLY if It's in Perfect Condition!!!

Hoping that none of you Ever have to go through what I did but just incase a little bit of information about how to handle things, oh & yeah be sure you Note EVERYONE'S name to you come in contact with.